The board of the main justice department of the Minsk city executive
committee has refused to register the Minsk city branch of For Freedom
movement.

BelaPAN news agency has learnt this from Yury Melyashkevich, the head of the city branch of For Freedom movement.

According to him, a package of documents for
registration must contain, among others, two documents. “One of them is
an application for registration signed by three members of the managing
body. In our case, it was the council of For Freedom movement. The
second one is a decision of the council on delegating three organization
members to represent interests of the organization in registration and
judicial bodies. We were denied registration because three members who
signed the application for registration and three members empowered to
represent the organization were not the same people,” Melyashkevich
said.

As the activist notes it is not provided for by the
law that a registration application must be signed by the people
representing it in governmental agencies. “The Ministry of Justice
expands and misinterprets the law,” the branch chairman thinks.

The denial will be appealed against in court,
because the issues that dissatisfied the board of the main justice
department “do not violate the Law on Public Associations and the
instruction of the Ministry of Justice on executing and considering
documents relating to state registration of public organizations”.